Audio Therapy Significantly Attenuates Aberrant Mood in Residential Patient Addiction Treatment

Audio Therapy Significantly Attenuates Aberrant Mood in Residential Patient Addiction Treatment: Putative Activation of Dopaminergic Pathways in the Meso-Limbic Reward Circuitry of Humans Journal of Addiction Research & Therapy ISSN:2155-6105 Siobhan Morse¹, John Giordano¹, Kenneth Perrine², B. William Downs³, Roger L. Waite³, Margaret Madigan³, John Bailey⁴, Eric R. Braverman²'⁵, Uma Damle⁵, Jennifer Knopf⁵, Thomas Simpatico⁶, Monty D. Moeller⁷, Debmalya Barh⁸ and Kenneth Blum¹'³'⁴'⁵'⁸* ¹Department of Holistic Research, G & G Holistic Addiction treatment Center and The National Institute for Holistic Addiction Studies (NIFHAS), North Miami Beach, FL, USA ²Department of Neurological Surgery, Weill-Cornell College of Medicine, New York, New York, USA ³Department of Nutrigenomics, LifeGen, Inc. San Diego, CA, USA ⁴Department of Psychiatry and McKnight Brain Institute, University of Florida, College of Medicine, Gainesville, FL, USA ⁵Department of Clinical Neurology, Path Foundation NY, New York, New York, USA ⁶Department of Psychiatry and Community Mental Health Institute, Center for Clinical & Translational Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT, USA ⁷Prescription Audio, Inc., Voorhees, New Jersey, USA ⁸Centre for Genomics and Applied Gene Therapy, Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology (IIOAB), Nonakuri, Purba Medinipur, West Bengal, India ABSTRACT: Using fMRI, researchers have clearly shown that listening to music strongly modulates activity in a network of mesolimbic structures involved in reward processing including the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and the ventral tegmental area (VTA), as well as the hypothalamus, and insula, which are thought to be involved in regulating autonomic and physiological responses to rewarding and emotional stimuli. We hypothesized that patients exposed to Stress & Deep Relaxation using Audio Therapy (music & sound) would show significant improvements in ten withdrawal symptoms systematically assessed supporting a role for this modality in recovery of patients with co-occurring mental illness and addiction. Thus our laboratory embarked on the evaluation of pleasant audio therapy in addicted patients undergoing recovery in our in-patient facility. We found significant pre to post Stress & Deep Relaxation using Audio Therapy (music & sound) in 76 drug dependent patients. Significant (at least p <.00002) improvements from pretreatment to post-treatment were found for all ten of the withdrawal symptoms assessed, including the following behaviors and physical ailments: cravings; stress; depression; mood swing; anxious; resentful; anger; fearful; body aches and headaches. This analysis was obtained one-hour after the audio therapy and was compared to the initial Pre-five-point score. We believe that this form of therapy, and specifically the Prescription Audio, is an excellent adjunct to treatment. Audio therapy, and specifically music, has been shown in the literature to potentiate the effects of dopamine. Listening to music elicits a response in centers of the brain associated with the experience of pleasure and the mitigation of stress. Our work is in agreement with other researchers who found that music therapy appears to be a novel motivational tool in a severely impaired inpatient sample of patients with co-occurring mental illness and addiction.